The Chaser Report - What Even Is Kayak Cross? | Andrew Hansen

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

Dom is joined by Andrew Hansen to discuss some of the confusing new sports at the Paris Olympics, including kayak cross. But what's it crossed with? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome the Chaser Report with Dom. And once again, Andrew Hanson is with us from sunny or otherwise Melbourne. Yes, hello, Domney. Usually otherwise, but you never know. Hope Springs Eternal, isn't it? I mean, Queensland had a bit of snow last week, extraordinarily enough.

A little bit north of the border, a little dusting of snow. I wish it would fall on the fake beach. in Brizzy, that's Because you turn into a little fake ski resort That's what I'd like to have in Wouldn't that be great with little Little ski jumps Where you end up in the Brisbane River

I love that spot in Brisbane there And it's got it You can have nice food nearby And now ski I was there actually Just a few weeks ago I walked past that beach And I was astonished

Andrew astonished I think it's called Streets Beach Because being fake It had to be commercially sponsored It was closed It was completely closed There was nothing to be done You couldn't sun yourself.

This is in one of the warmest places in Australia. And by Queensland standards, it was too cold. Coming from New South Wales, I thought it was a perfect day for a bit of a beach, a beach experience. What a shame that closed the beach. That's a pity. Is it a dog beach, that streets beach? Can you take your dog? It's pretty small, so I'm guessing not.

But the amazing thing about it is that, and probably the good thing about it, actually, I'd forgotten. See, to my mind, when I imagine it, I imagine that the water at the streets beach is river water. that it's, you know, it's like one of these things that you can actually take a sort of a swim in the river, but not at all. It's like a public pool with sand. Oh, it's chlorinated, is it?

Well, I think it'd have to be, wouldn't it? You've got all these toddlers weighing in it. I suppose it might be, yeah, the streets beach couldn't be. Yeah, it couldn't be too natural. It could go green. The streets company would be, their reputation would be in trouble if there wasn't chlorinated. No, it's completely artificial, even though it's next to a body of water.

As far as I'm aware, none of the water passes between the two areas. And given that there's a giant freeway on the fast side, of the Brisbane River, it's probably good. I mean, Joe Bocer Peterson went, oh, you know what the best thing is to build alongside a riverbank? It's a giant, massive spaghetti junction of freeway.

There's a big freeway on now. It was just opposite the streets, beach. I think it'd be nice if some more of our beaches in Australia. Some of the famous ones, I feel, should be, you know, privately owned and sponsored by junk food companies. It'd be great to have, you know, why is it Bondi Beach in Sydney, for example?

I mean, that could be the Hungry Jack's Beach. The waves are better at Hungry Jack's Beach. Yes, yes. McDonald's would, you know, just do the beach down the road and that have a... McDonald's would do a drive-thru beach. I think that's the thing that's lacking in our beach culture. Look, as a beach hater, as somebody who can't stand... Can you not?

So I would go the drive-thru beach, absolutely. Because I like looking at a beach. Oh, okay. I just don't like touching a beach. I don't want to touch the beach. I don't want to feel the sand and the shells. Yeah, right. So if we could design a beach that you could drive over, you'd enjoy that.

Absolutely, because the beach, they're very pretty things. but just not to be stood on. What about a travellator? If we could have a beach, like a Westfield beach. Genius, yes. I'd be right into that, the Westfield Beach. Yes, please. Take me there.

Very, very good. Because you know there's now the Penrith Beach. They call it Pondai Beach. It is too, yes, yes. How is that going for? Very well. I mean, I haven't been, I'm keen to check it out. But my understanding, Andrew, is that when you're building a beach in Penrith,

which is, I think it's, I know, 70 kilometres or something from the coast. It's a long drive from the coast. Standards are low for what that beach can be. So all you need to do... They've never seen the sea people in Perrera. That's right. And this isn't... It's a lake.

It's a Penrith Lakes. They manage to put a car park down there. I think there's like one food truck or in an ice cream van and a little temporary toilet block. That's all you need to make the people of Penrith happy. Well, that sounds like all you need. I feel like here in Melbourne we could use that too

because we don't have a nice beach in Melbourne. We don't really have a... I mean, we have what we call beaches, but they really just kind of strips of pebbles. with industrial effluent washing up against them. Yeah, I mean, St Kilda. I quite like the Penruth beach to be built here too. You could.

Well, look, the St Kilda beach, last time I went there, it was a bit like a pastiche of a beach. It was, you go there to watch rock gigs, don't you? Isn't that what St Kilda's for or to shoot up? Either one or both. But not the beach. The beach is just sort of there. No, exactly.

I saw the wiggles there at the Palais. Of course. That was a great gig to shoot up at. Yeah, okay. But no, thinking of beaches. in, I mean, on the river, why hasn't the Yarra seen fit? You wouldn't have streets sponsoring, the Yarra Beach, would you have to be some sort of artist not got a sergilato, Yarra Beach, wouldn't it?

Well, that's right, yeah, or a coffee. Yes, we'd have sort of a, you know, St. Ali coffee roasted beach. Yes, absolutely, you would. What a great idea. I think that would probably happen at some point. Or the casino. I mean, are they still allowed to burn all that gas? You know, those giant burbling gas things outside with the flames?

is the only place you can get warm in Melbourne in winter is under those giant. Have they been cancelled from using natural gas now? Of course not, Dommy. It's the casino. You know, Crown Casino are allowed to do anything. So they could have a beach. Couldn't they?

They can do whatever they want. With pokies. We could have the Crown Beach. I'm amazed they haven't already built an offensively huge vertical beach in the middle of Melbourne. It would have to be vertical if it was crowning. Imagine they'd cordoned off a bunch of the Yarra and then they'd not only have pokies on the sand

and roulette tables. They'd have the world's largest lifeguard tower that was also a hotel. And on top you'd have the lifeguards just monitoring the beach below from hundreds of metres in the air. It'd be fantastic. And with poker machines all the way along the beach.

Absolutely. It'd be fantastic. It'd be popular. And they'd get gourmet chefs, wouldn't they, to come and run the little ice cream concessions and the barbecue. Yes, yes. Yes, they'd have a branch of Nobu or something.

They would. They would. Opening up, I imagine. Yeah, yeah. Now, thinking more about Brisbane, I mean, I'm quite fond of Brisbane these days. I generally have a good time there. But I wonder if, given the successive streets beach, it's time to bulldoze Brisbane entirely and just have it as some sort of sponsored beach.

I mean, the whole place. The whole thing. Queen Street Mall. You're speaking a great deal of sense. You don't really need it. And that was what Joe tried to do, but that sort of heritage people got in. You can even leave a little bit of the heritage stuff, but much of Brisbane you could total and start again. And what better to do than having a giant beach?

That's what they did on the Gold Coast, isn't it? They made all those fake lakes. It could just be the nation's giant beach, isn't it? We could all go to the streets beach. It was just this enormous thing that takes up most of Queensland. Yeah. I mean, I was in the Gold Coast and I'd forgotten that not only did they ruin the actually quite beautiful Gold Coast beaches, all those giant condos, but on the other side, they've got all these fake rivers and lakes.

I mean, I think the original rivers were real, but they've turned into this giant kind of completely artificial series of water views. and lagoons and things, you know, mermaid waters and broad beach waters and all that. So they could do that with Brisbane. They know how to do that. Yeah, I mean, I quite like it. I like driving around that area and trying to guess, you know, which bit of water was naturally there. And none. And which one was, you know, built just to make Christopher Scace happy.

Yes. Or something. Absolutely. But look, this brings us to the vaguely news-related part of the podcast, which is the Paris Olympics and the new sports coming in, which we'll get into after this. The Chaser Report, news you know you can't trust. And Andrew, of course, the two things are linked together because Brisbane has time, don't they?

I mean, their Olympics is in 2032. They could bulldoze. If they start planning the events they wanted, the Brisbane Olympics, they could take a leaf out of what's coming to Paris and design Brisbane as a playground for their own games. Well, I think if the place has been bulldozed and turned into a beach, it would be the perfect Olympic city.

Yeah, beach volleyball. Yeah, nice and flat. A lot of beach volleyball. Yeah, absolutely. You could have sand comes. Castle building as an event at the Olympics. I can see this. I'm looking forward to the Brisbane.

Oh, it's going to be fabulous. And I mean, Paris is getting on the way. They're bringing in breakdancing or breaking, as it's called. If you said I want to watch an event of breaking, I would think it was some sort of, you know, violent rugby league type thing. But no, it's what we're calling break dancing now. It's not dancing, Andrew. It's breaking now.

It's called breaking. Gosh, I'm so behind, dummy. I'm really behind. I mean, when you mentioned breakdancing, all I remember is school teachers who used to get so angry about it when we were in school. It was at the assembly every single week. It was a huge talking point that they'd come out and ban break dancing. And then the week after that, they'd ban it again.

Because they had to, because every time they banned it, they made it more popular. Can I just imagine in some sort of an 80s rap video, the principal going up there and going, oh, no more breakdancy? And the kid's just, you know, busting a move on the stage back then? In response, yeah. Oh, yeah, is that what you say, principal? We'll get a load of this. Take this, me spinning on my back or whatever it is, or doing your headstance.

Yeah, that's their Breaking, as opposed to Breaking Bad, which is more of a Gold Coast event, The Meth Lab. That would be a very good event for the Gold Coast at the Brisbane Olympics. Kayak Cross is coming to the Paris Olympics. At last.

Finally, the people have been listened to. For too long, kayak Cross has been overlooked as an Olympic sport. It seems so obvious that at least if anybody knew what Kayak Cross was, we would all be demanding that it be in the Olympics. That's right. Because they've had a kayaking for a while.

They've had canoeing and kayaking for a while. Oh, for a long time since I was a kid. So what do you think kayak cross is crossed with? Yeah. Oh, is that a cross between kayaking and some other sport, is it? I'm wondering what you think it is. I'm just trying to look. Oh, maybe is it tennis?

Is it tennis? So you stand in the kayak with the racket and. Yes, wouldn't that be great? Or perhaps with shooting. Across the river. They combine it with the shooting. You can't shoot the other kayakers out of their kayaks. It could be that.

Oh, you'd get careful what you say about shooting. That's true. We might be deported like Tunisia's deal. You know what's that? No, it's, this is very strange. So what they do is, it's apparently more dramatic than kayak and canoe slalom. So you go through an aquatic obstacle course of up and downstream gates. That's a bit like the original.

But you get launched off a ramp into the water. So you go two metres into the water. And contact is allowed. You can, you can use your paddles to stop the competitors. So it's kind of like dodging cars. and you've got to compete one Eskimo roll before crossing the finish line, which means you've got to do a three, a full 360 degree flip and land fully upright during the event.

I don't think they've thought this through properly. From what you've just described to me, Dommy, this seems like a very chaotic game. It sounds like it was very haphazardly thrown together, and at the last minute somebody said, wait a minute, we've come up with a pretty good game, but it's just not maybe interesting enough. I know, let's require them to do one,

360 degree flip before they cross the finish line as well I mean you could put that into any sport to improve it like you can put it into football they have to do a 360 degree wouldn't that be great if every AFL game

you take a mark and you've got to do some sort of a back flip or something you've got to yes what's known as an Eskimo have they not renamed the Eskimo role that's a slightly racist name isn't it yes I mean it should be called the Inuit role

Inuit role yes indeed and they're I'm looking at them here this is Red Bull of course sponsor it because, of course, they do. You begin sort of on a slope above the water, so you get sort of dropped into it. And it just makes me think how much Craig would have enjoyed this back in the day. He was the canoeer at university. It was, Craig Roocastle, yes.

Very keen kane or canoeer, wasn't he? Yeah, yeah, he was. And also very keen, quite a physical guy. He would have liked pushing people out of the way with the paddle. He wouldn't he still enjoy that. I think, yeah, he used to play a sport called canoe polo. That's right, which is probably equally violent. That's the thing they're missing, isn't it?

They've got the flip and the airborne thing. They haven't got a ball. They need to put the ball in. The ball is perhaps what they need. At least they're the flip. Yeah. Oh, boy, I'm really getting into the flip now. I'd love to see that brought into golf as well.

I think, you know, just before they. And chess, you know, I think the grandmaster, when he's considering the checkmate, you're not allowed to checkmate somebody until you've done a 360 flip. Yeah, absolutely. But I'm imagining, yes, you know, in just every sport, people being allowed to attack each other with the equipment. I mean, that's the problem with car racing,

is that you're not allowed to actually drive into the other cars enough. You're right, you're right. There would be improved if you could just attack, attack with the gear in any sport, wouldn't it? I think that's what's missing. So that's Paris. They're bringing in the canoe cross. Some of the recent sports are back.

There's surfing, back, skateboarding's back. Sport climbing, apparently, which debuted in Tokyo is coming back. Sport climbing. Climbing isn't something you'd... To me, climbing's a way. of escaping from something. I wouldn't do it voluntarily. Yeah, it is, isn't it? It's just it's not really, I don't think that's a sport.

It's just something that kids do for fun. Yeah. I mean, they may as well have monkey bars. Or is that an Olympic event. It probably is. Yeah, it probably is. But they've cancelled, from the Tokyo Olympics, they've cancelled baseball, softball and karate. Karate was just brought in, I guess, as a Japanese sport. Which makes me think finally, Andrew, what sports could be added to Brisbane as a sort of local bit? Because every games gets its own little bit of local flavour, doesn't it?

I think Sydney had the beach volleyball or something. And what would you do in Brisbane? Would it be demolition that the sport would be? You'd need to knock down a historic Queensland pub in the middle of the night. That's not a bad one, actually. A bit of that or maybe sandbagging. Could be a good sport for. Oh, yes.

They have to do a lot of that there when it gets, you know, they get those floods every so often and everybody. I'm always really inspired actually because I've known some of my Brisbane friends, you know, during one of those floods. They're always out there helping by, by, by carrying sandbags around and plonking them down, everybody pitches in. Yes, that's what a good idea.

And, I mean, this is a serious story, you know, the disasters in Brisbane and the terrible things have happened in the river. But of all the disasters to happen in the Brisbane River, they haven't had the kayak cross during the Brisbane River flood. Well, no, this is what they've been lacking, Domino. Yeah, I think you're right. The kayak cross would be the ultimate sport, really,

to bring in there, wouldn't it? So you put that in and you have to flip. What I'm imagining is the floodwater, you've got to ride the floodwater from the Brisbane River, Do an Eskimo flip if we're calling it, that or Inuit flip, and land up in the streets beach, and there you go. Gold medal. Oh, absolutely.

You'll be given it there. And instead of medals, I think they should hand out steaks in Brisey. Stakes and a beautiful condo apartment in the Gold Coast, all the winners. Oh, yeah, I'd be right there. I'd be right there. Andrew, lovely as ever, thank you for a... Going on this journey, really, because at the start of the podcast, I had no idea what Kayak Cross was.

But now I think it could be... It could be highly entertaining. Yeah, it's completely It's completely news to me In fact, all these sports I mean, I'm not a sporty person So this is all Very revealing to me

I've never heard of any of these thoughts before I'll see you at Brisbane 2032 In the demolished ruins of the CBD We'll be there cheering on our Aussie Men and Women As long as they save the Breakfast Creek Hotel Yes, as long as they save one classic pub You can demolish the rest

Brisbane Go Ed That's the green light from Andrew Hansen Our gear is from Road We're part of the Iconiclass Network And we'll catch you next time Thank you.